The vaccination results show we can end the pandemic, but the hurdles are ahead

Promising early results from vaccine trials give hope to defeat Covid-19, but vaccines may be less effective in the real world and people’s safety concerns could hamper uptake

health

| leader

18th November 2020

What a difference a week makes. It was around this time that we moved from hoping a coronavirus vaccine would work to promising results from not one but three studies.

When last week’s edition went to press, we had just heard news that a vaccine candidate appears to be safe and effective in late-stage human studies – at least based on interim results. That was the vaccine from the US company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech. Then came the results – albeit in a smaller sample – of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V. And on Monday the US company Moderna …